Demolition continues at Marble Hill

SILO COMES DOWN: The dome of a nuclear containment silo at the former Marble Hill power plant smoked after explosives went off Wednesday. (Staff photo by Ken Ritchie)

The dome of a nuclear containment silo at the never-completed Marble Hill power plant smoked after explosives went off Wednesday. After the explosion, though, the dome only showed a few new signs of cracking.

The dome is one of the last visible evidences of the home of a nuclear power plant that was started but never completed in the 1970s and 1980s near the Jefferson and Clark county line.

Emilie Mardigian of MCM Management Corp. of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., said that MCM owns the site and is demolishing the plant to reclaim the scrap materials, which are sold for profit. Mardigian said the company has worked on the demolition of very large projects, including the old Tiger Stadium in Detroit. She added that the Marble Hill plant was built with such a high-volume and high-density of metal reinforced concrete that the demolition has been anything but standard.

Neither of the silos has come down easily, and the last dome is still proving difficult to destroy. Sooner than later she expects the demolition to be completed and all usable scrap will be gone. She said about 95 percent of the materials are reusable.

There is no word yet on what will happen to the land after MCM is done salvaging.

Mardigian said her company has heard several questions about why no one is wearing protective suits for radioactive waste, and she stressed that Marble Hill was never an active site and that there was never any radioactive material on the grounds.

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A video shot by industrial photographer Stephen Sette Ducati earlier in the demolition is online at http://vimeo.com/14723882.

I worked at Marble Hill for about 2/12 years in the Labors Union. The day that the lid was installed on containment 1, I was there watching it get lifted into place. It's unbelievable that all the effort we put into building it,was for NOTHING!!!This comment has been hidden due to low approval.